Pokerstars Unveil New MTT Series

On February 29th, Pokerstars unveiled a brand-new tournament series that will take place between March 15-25, PokerUpdate can reveal.

The series, entitled “MicroMillions”, was announced by Pokerstars as “the most affordable and inclusive poker tournament series to date,”. By the end, it will have given out at least $5 million in 100 events in just over a week of play.

It was built specifically for the micro-stakes and recreational players who cannot afford to play in Pokerstars’ other tournament series’. Buy-ins will be as little as 11 cents, typically range from $2-$10, but includes a daily $1 tournament offering $100,000 guaranteed.

The grand finale will be a $22 Main Event which Pokerstars promise will have a guaranteed prize-pool of $1 million.

Tournaments will run around the clock from 01:30-21:00 (ET) allowing players from around the world to find events that suit their time-zones.

While the series will be predominantly Hold’em, it will also cater to those who prefer their games mixed, with events in Pot-Limit Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, Draw, Stud and 8-Game. Formats of the tournaments will also vary with Turbo, Rebuy, Shootout, Knockout, Big Ante and 6-Max MTT’s available.

Pokerstars are fast becoming the standard for online poker tournament series’, particularly after Full TIlt’s departure causing the end of the Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOP’s). The poker site already holds annually the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) as well as Spring and Turbo variants of the same poker series (SCOOP and TCOOP).

It seems Pokerstars are continuing to work on producing a healthier and more entertaining poker economy for the lifeblood of any poker site, the recreational player-pool. The buy-ins are affordable for anybody and will allow a player of any skill level to have a chance to win due to the softer player pools involved.

At the same time, the tournaments still provide recreational players with “the dream”, the ability to turn an initial small outlay into life-changing sums of money for those who otherwise might not have had the opportunity to play for such amounts. This should also provide the excitement factor similar to that seen in the big televised events.

In the future, Pokerstars will be unlikely to be able to enter the American market, a player-pool that every operator will likely chase for when it is available, as it was earlier seized by the Department Of Justice.

The site seems to be looking at ways of keeping a healthy player pool by acquiring licences to operate in the regulated markets cropping up around Europe (so far this includes Malta, Denmark, France, Italy, Belgium and Estonia) and holding a licence from the Isle Of Man allowing them to operate around the world.

The tournament series will also look to entice rest-of-world players and keep them away from US-friendly poker operators in the future, allowing them to stay as a major poker site worldwide.